Popular

July 14, 2006

Suicide bomber kills Pakistani cleric

by Sam Savage

KARACHI (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed a leading
Pakistani Muslim Shi'ite cleric, Allama Hassan Turabi, in an
attack on Friday in the volatile southern city of Karachi,
provincial government officials said.

"Allama Turabi is dead," Salahuddin Haider, a spokesman for
the Sindh government, said from the hospital ward where the
mortally wounded cleric had been rushed.

A young nephew of the cleric and a bodyguard also died,
along with the bomber, in the attack outside Turabi's house in
a residential area of the city.

Television news channel ARYone showed pictures of a head
lying by a wall. Suicide bombers' heads are often blown off by
the upward force of explosives strapped to their body.

"We have found body parts of the bomber outside the
allama's house," said Mushtaq Shah, a deputy inspector of
police.

Turabi had survived an assassination attempt in Karachi in
April, when his car was hit by a remote-controlled bomb.

Karachi has been the scene of bloody rivalry between
Pakistan's majority Sunnis and minority Shi'ites since the
1980s.